I’m always here for Bull Nakano swinging the sh*t out of women by their hair. It just looks like death every time.

Worst: Botched endings or
Best: This Ending Is Hilarious

I’m not quite sure what happened at the end of this match. The ref was maybe not supposed to count to three and the match maybe wasn’t supposed to end. So the ref counts to three and everyone stops for 30 seconds. Like, literally, everyone. Then Sonny Ono (too soon, WCW) just hightails it to the post-match angle. Just the sight of him darting across the screen and YOLOing it tickles the hell out of me. Then everyone in the ring sort of shrugs and goes about the post-match motorcycle breaking. Plus, since it wasn’t until then that the bell rang, we have a match that ends in DQ due to excessive motorcycle damaging.

Fashion Break: Steiner Shades!

Scott Steiner’s shades can’t fall off…so he has the old lady glasses string. I love it.

Worst: who thought sturgis was a good idea? and Why Are You Making Me Worst A Benoit/Malenko Match?

WCW booked this pay-per-view perfectly for the crowd of idiots present who didn’t give a sh*t about wrestling. They had some flippy guys, some big muscular guys and chicks wrestling. So even if nobody there cared about Boston crabs, they could still enjoy the spectacles.

Then, a wrestling match happened and these mouth breathing neanderthals didn’t know how to act. To them, Benoit vs. Malenko was boring as hell. So boring that when the first fall ended in a draw, the crowd booed that they were getting five more minutes. Read that again: the crowd BOOED five more minutes of Benoit/Malenko. F*ck these morons.

The problem is I think Benoit and Malenko sort of got rattled by the lack of reaction abad the overtimes seemed to devolve into big moves to get people back into it instead of following with the story.

Still, if you watch this match on mute, it’s pretty incredible. Of course it is. It’s Benoit/Malenko.

Worst: Rules Are Dumb

The match went like this: regular time limit, then five more timed minutes then another overtime. At one point, Schiavone says they’ll have to go to “sudden death” next. However, “sudden death” rules are “the first person to score wins,” so technically the whole match and every match that ever happened ever was a sudden death match. So if you’re going to keep adding time to the match under “sudden death” rules, then just makes the rules “wrestle forever until one person scores a fall.” Your rules make zero senses.

WWE Network

Worst: F*ck This. Seriously.

Brandon sometimes interjects commentary about how misogynist and horrible wrestling can be when it comes to treating women because he’s totally gay or something. Right bros? And inevitably someone will comment that he’s taking it too seriously or he should get over it or something.

Well, I’m about to get serious, too, for a minute. So if you think I’m taking things too seriously or bringing your day down, you can skip all of this.

Still here? Good. F*ck this racist f*cking crowd with all my heart.

The Sturgis crowd had been pretty dead for the last 45 minutes and it’s clear they didn’t know who to cheer or who to boo throughout the night. Then Harlem Heat came out and everyone lost their sh*t. Harlem Heat got the most heat of the night and it’s only because they were two black guys in the ring. Sure, Ice Train came to the ring earlier but he was bandaged and clearly the babyface.

But Harlem Heat got a nuclear reaction from the 99.9 percent crowd because they were two Black guys. The crowd is yelling, incensed, holding up Confederate flags and yelling at Booker and Stevie more than they yelled at anyone the entire night.

Basically, the whole match devolved into a glorified Klan rally. Now would be a perfect time to talk about the stereotypes of Black wrestlers through the years and how it perpetuates racism in the same way some portrayals of women contribute to sexism. But I’m not convinced this crowd has watched enough wrestling to have been programmed that any Black character not shucking and/or jiving is a heel. No, these f*cks are just racist all on their own.

Watching this back makes me have a newfound respect for Booker T and Stevie Ray as they didn’t get rattled and used the crowd reaction to get even more heat by playing into the chants and cat calls. Still, this is horrible to watch and I can’t even think of all the things the crowd yelled at Harlem Heat.

Meanwhile Shiavone and Dusty are all, “this is what it’s all about! Crowd is getting into it! Woohoo” as if they’re totally oblivious to WHY the crowd is revving its engines and little kids are flipping the bird.

I know a few people will say I’m overreacting and this is all my imagination. Right. I swear I’m not going to debate this fact no matter what your Devil’s advocacy says: the crowd booed and hated Harlem Heat because they were Black. That’s racist. And that sucks.

Urban legend has it that a young Bulgarian was in the crowd, got indoctrinated into the racist culture of Sturgis and vowed to go on to wrestle and camel clutch every Black guy he saw ever. JOKEZ!

I’m doing a rewatch of WCW through the 90s with a friend and the Harlem Heat match turning into a Klan rally was definitely the thing that stood out most about this PPV to both of us, so yeah it’s definitely not your imagination.

(The other thing that stood out was Dusty and Brain’s respective takes on “biker clothes”)

Why was WCW in Sturgis? Because Eric Bischoff is insecure about his masculinity so he always has to be super-super ultraman. Which includes riding motorcycles. So he created a convoluted way for WCW to have a show at the Sturgis bike rally so he could go. Because having a show no one in attendance pays for is a brilliant idea!

One personally interesting thing about this event: my cable company sent me a free event t-shirt for ordering the pay per view. So not only did WCW put on a zero gate show, they gave away free merch from it too. Gee, I wonder why they went out of business.

You write like a 16-year-old who has dreams of going to Journalism school someday. Kudos though on getting Uproxx to sign off on such a dumb idea of recapping old PPVs. You have material for like the next two years.

On your point about racism and just f*cking hating a crowd, I was watching one of the In Your House events the other day, the one where Goldust faces Warrior, and that crowd is fucking disgraceful. Chanting “YOU’RE A FAG-GOT!!” at Goldust while he’s flopping around for Warrior was tragic, just fucking tragic. I was alone in my house watching it and I shook my head and buried it in the palm of my hand.

…now I’m off to read the rest of the report, but I wanted to throw that out there while it was still fresh in my mind.

Being one of the ones who criticizes Stroud sometimes when he becomes holier than thou or tries to speak on the subject on race when he doesn’t really understand the culture he’s talking about.

I’m totally with you on the crowd and I’m impressed that Booker T. and Stevie Ray were able to keep their composure but at that point I’m sure they were used to being trolled by racist fans. What’s worst is that WCW would choose Sturgis 3 more times after that for “Road Wild”

I thought Sting was a great wrestler, weak talker, and overall put in shitty situations by WCW (Being saved by Robocop, the beach vmini-movie where Sting and Davey Boy face off with Vader & Sid, White Castle of Fear, teaming with Shockmaster, Spin the wheel make the deal, Sting’s Crow run ends without a clean victory over Hogan, and so much more)

When I think about Sting in WCW, I don’t know why he stayed. He never got the deep title run he deserved.

IDK, I feel like Sting is everything Stroud hates about Cena. He takes damage until it’s time to “Sting Up” and do the Stinger Splash and the Death Lock (which made the Rock’s sharpshooter look competent), when he suddenly runs around like he’d never been hit. He had the benefit of GREAT heels (Flair, Vader, and the NWO). And honestly, I thought DDP was a much more compelling face counterpart to the NWO than Sting was (Karl Malone match aside).

I enjoy these – thanks for doing them – but could I make a request? I’d really love a little extra context, if you could kind of set up some things maybe. Like, for the “Best: Of course this is a best” portion, I’m still not entirely sure who was wrestling. Is that Sin Cara and Mysterio? I can’t tell great from the picture. And why “of course”?

I only watched wrestling in the early 2000s, then stopped and got back into it last year (largely thanks to Brandon’s B&W of RAW columns and because NXT is awesome). I have the network now and I’m catching up, but I don’t have all the historical knowledge that I think your column assumes that I have. These are 20-year old shows and a little context would help a lot, especially in terms of identifying the players.

That bit about Big E.’s silk shirts was great. I really hope that’s how his next feud starts. (I mean, I’m really hoping he gets another feud some time this calendar year, but if he does, I really want it to be because some weiner heel like the Miz insulting his fashion sense.)

There’s another one: Kinta Tamaoka as a heel ref in Dragon Gate was great. Of course, Dragon Gate is a promotion that incorporates a lot of comedy and shenanigans, which is part of the reason it worked so well.